


Half a Dozen Daises

by tokillthatmockingbird



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, and melissa isn't going to have any of that, in which derek hale tries self-deprecating bullshit, not in her house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 22:51:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokillthatmockingbird/pseuds/tokillthatmockingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He drops one of the daisies in the middle of a crosswalk while basking in the memory of the last hug he shared with his sister. She, like Erica and Boyd, left him too, but at least this time there was a sense of closure and a sense of renewal. He’d see Cora again.</p><p>If he survived the next Big Bad that came crawling out of the woods.</p><p>Sometimes, he didn’t know if he wanted to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half a Dozen Daises

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Desired_Misery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desired_Misery/gifts).



> This is a fic written for the lovely CrazyHyper! I know this wasn't exactly what you asked for, but I couldn't imagine anyone abusing Derek Hale any worse than he abuses himself! I hope you all enjoy it!

_Six_.

He buys a half dozen daisies because roses seemed too romantic and carnations seemed too cheap. Derek Hale has a lot of sins to pay for, sins that even holy water can’t wash away, but he sees Chapman’s Nursery while driving into town, and he figures flowers is as good a place to start on the road to reconciliation.

No one has asked him to apologize. As far as Derek knows, no one blames him. But he blames him. He blames himself for the blood at the roots in the cellar, for the systematic annihilation of upstanding Beacon Hills civilians, for rattling the lives of innocent teenagers to the core with lycanthropy and death. So much death.

First it was Kate Argent with her fire and her grudges. Then Jackson with his claws and his lost soul. And now it was Jennifer with her magic and her vanity. All of them latching on Derek because, for some reason, only the worst people can see how lonely he is. And they’re the ones who prey on each and every one of his vulnerabilities.

 

 _Five_.

He doesn’t realize he’s crushed one of the daisies in his hand until he’s halfway down the block. When he feels the wetness of pulverized petals on his palm, he growls in annoyance and stalks onward, forgetting the Camaro in the parking lot but forgetting absolutely nothing else. No, he couldn’t forget one moment of the past two years, no matter how hard he tried.

His family. Erica. Boyd. He doesn’t have enough fingers and toes to tally the number of people he’s killed— in one way or another. People who matter to him, people who mattered to other people, people who mattered because they were people. The sanctity of human life didn’t mean much to his uncle, but Derek felt it in his aching, tired bones when those people were gone.

Cora always said she thought Peter was adopted.

Cora. He dropped her off at an airport with a ticket to Argentina. Said running was never really her thing anyway, but this fight wasn’t hers anymore, and Derek would never be satisfied until he went back and finished it.

 

 _Four_.

He drops one of the daisies in the middle of a crosswalk while basking in the memory of the last hug he shared with his sister. She, like Erica and Boyd, left him too, but at least this time there was a sense of closure and a sense of renewal. He’d see Cora again.

 _If_ he survived the next Big Bad that came crawling out of the woods.

Sometimes, he didn’t know if he wanted to.

 

 _Three_.

When Melissa McCall opens the front door of her home, she looks absolutely stunned, but she plucks a daisy out of his bouquet. “Is this for me? Derek Hale, you shouldn’t have!” she teases. He looks so baffled when she ushers him inside that she offers him a smirk behind the petals of the daisy. When she sees the taut frown pulling at his lips, her smile fades. “What’s the matter?” she asks, lowering the flower from her nose.

“I-I owe you an apology,” he stutters. He meekly holds out the drooping bouquet as an afterthought, which she promptly ignores. He awkwardly clears his throat, drops his hands to his sides. “The darach. I put your life in danger. I put the sheriff’s life in danger. I…” His words abruptly stop in a harsh, self-deprecating laugh. “Well, I won’t list all the people I put in danger, but it’s a lot. And I wanted to make it up to you. ...Somehow.”

“Did you get the sheriff flowers too?” Melissa asks with a raise of a well-trained brow.

Derek deflates. “I, uh, no.”

She lets out a breathy laugh. “I’m kidding. They’re lovely. Come on. Let’s get these in some water,” she says before directing him into her kitchen.

 

 _Two_.

Before Derek can properly protest and excuse himself, Melissa has him in a scrubbed kitchen chair with a glass of lemonade and a plate of cookies. The rush of maternal warmth he feels is squashed when he realizes that he’s mangled the stem of one of the remaining flowers in his grip. He chokes while she fills up a pitcher of water and tosses the daisy into the trash bin.

When Melissa sees him with two measly flowers in his hand, she laughs, breathy and wholehearted. “Well, it’s the thought that counts, right?”

When Derek tries to laugh with her, she can feel the amount of effort it takes to even fake joy. She clears her throat and sits across from him, picking up a cookie and chewing thoughtfully.

“You do know that apologizing is unnecessary, right?” she asks, inspecting her own baking with a careful eye. “I mean, it’s sweet and noble and everything, but it’s not like the darach was your fault.”

Derek doesn’t think she’ll understand, so he just shrugs and sips his lemonade. It’s sweeter than his mother used to make it, and it brings up stinging memories of charcoal and ash and another person he let down. He hangs his head.

“Can you explain something about the darach to me?” Melissa asks.

Derek looks up.

“Did you ask her to tie me to a post in a root cellar?” she asks. Derek’s face burns. Melissa shakes her head. “You boys and your egos. You know, I hate to break it to you, Derek, but not everything revolves around you. Jennifer Blake was one very independent and determined woman. Nothing you could have said or done could have made her do what she did or stop her.”

A muscle in Derek’s jaw ticks as he fights to hold his words in his mouth. Melissa watches it carefully, has seen it many times in her own son’s face. She sighs and rubs her fingers along the petals of one of her two flowers.

 

 _One_.

“You know, you and Scott are so alike sometimes,” Melissa sighs as she absently tears petals off the flower. Derek raises a brow in interest. “He’s constantly blaming himself for things that aren’t his fault because he thinks he could have—”

“Stopped it,” Derek finishes because they’re his words too.

Melissa falls silent for a moment. “Stopped it. Yeah.”

Derek’s shoulders slump, and he tries to distract himself with the plate of cookies, very carefully eyeing all of them to pick the perfect one.

“That’s just too much for one person to take on,” Melissa says, shaking her head. “You can’t stop everything bad that happens in this town, even if you want to.”

“It’s not just stopping it,” Derek tells her even though he doesn’t know why. “I _start_ it. I… I’m the one who let Kate in before she burned my house down. I’m the one who turned Erica and Boyd, and that got them killed. I’m the one who cozied up to the Darach and never _once_ realized that she was trying to kill everyone.”

“Neither did anyone else,” Melissa points out. She reaches across the table and folds her hands over Derek’s. He jumps slightly at the touch, but she knows the reaction well from sharing space with Isaac. She simply looks into his eyes with affectionate warmth. Derek visibly relaxes. “You know why I became a nurse?” Derek makes no committal movements. “Because I wanted to save people too. Scott was six, and my marriage was failing, and his asthma was nearly killing him, and I was so tired of letting everything die around me that I wanted to finally help.”

Derek looks up and feels as though a line of understanding runs statically through the space where their fingers touch.

“My first patient died. I mean, talk about being the worst nurse ever. All I had to do was make sure his saline drip was good, and he died overnight.” Derek’s hands clench under hers in some sort of sign of understanding and sympathy. “He died because his heart gave out, not because of my saline drip. I happen to be pretty good at saline drips.”

Derek sniffs a laugh with her.

“Point is, just because you’re there, just because you’re trying to help, doesn’t mean you’re going to succeed. And it doesn’t mean that failure is your fault. Sometimes, it’s out of your control,” she tells him. She leans back and pulls her hands away with a smile. “So the flowers were nice, and so was the apology, but I won’t accept it. Because, no matter what you were doing with Jennifer Blake, nothing was going to stop her from what she did, including you. And as I understand it, you were an instrumental part of saving my life. So I should be thanking you, not forgiving you.”

A silence passes between them in which they share an easy smile and an understanding.

 

 

_Zero_.

He starts from the house with the last daisy in his hand when Melissa stops him.

“Where are you going with my flower?”

Derek turns around, startled. “You said you weren’t accepting it.”

“I said I wasn’t accepting the apology. I still want the flower.”

He leaves the house empty-handed but with more in his heart than when he came.

 


End file.
